HARRISBURG — Forty-four years after his body was discovered on the side of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the state police have identified and are looking for information in the apparent murder of a U.S. Marine who’d twice received the Purple Heart in Vietnam.

Corporal Robert Daniel Corriveau was just 20 but had already been wounded three separate times in Vietnam before a state trooper on turnpike patrol found him stabbed through the heart Nov. 18, 1968.

Corriveau was originally classified and buried as a John Doe because he had no identification on him. The state trooper discovered the man in a seated position roughly a mile east of the Downingtown interchange, according to a release from the state police Thursday.

The case was classified as a homicide.

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Looking to “further the investigation” in July 2009, the state police Criminal Investigation Assessment/Missing Persons Unit with the Chester County District Attorney’s Office and the Chester County Coroner’s Office exhumed the unidentified body and took bone samples.

The samples were sent to the University of Northern Texas Center for Human Identification. A DNA sample was taken from the bone sample and put into the nationwide missing persons DNA database.

In addition to the DNA sample, police said there were indications that the murdered man was in the military because of his physical description and two tattoos: one with “a bird in flight with a heart in the background and the other being a bulldog wearing a World War I helmet with (the) letters ‘USMC’ printed below it.”

As such, a plea for help in the case was put out to the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service Cold Case Unit the U.S. Marine Corps Absentee Collection Unit, the police said.

In May, the DNA was “positively identified” as Corriveau’s.

Police said when Corriveau disappeared, he was a patient at the Philadelphia Naval Hospital being treated “for a combat related condition,” possibly the same condition that he also received treatment for at the Chelsea Naval Hospital in Chelsea, Mass.

He was discovered missing from the Philadelphia Naval Hospital 7:50 a.m. the day he was discovered dead on the turnpike, Nov. 18.

Corriveau, originally from Lawrence, Mass., enlisted in the Marines in March 1965 and served several tours in Vietnam.

The state police are looking for information from anyone who may have served with Corriveau, as well as anyone who may have been staff or patients at the Philadelphia Naval Hospital in October and November in 1968.

Those with information are asked to contact the state police at 610-268-5158 or email RA-1968MarineDeath@pa.gov.

Anyone with a tip in the Corriveau case or any other “serious crime or wanted person” can call the Pennsylvania Crime Stoppers at 1-800-4PA-TIPS or visit the website at www.PACrimeStoppers.org.